String Breaking in Non-Abelian Gauge Theories with Fundamental Matter Fields

Abstract

We present clear numerical evidence for string breaking in three-dimensional SU(2) gauge theory with fundamental bosonic matter through a mixing analysis between Wilson loops and meson operators representing bound states of a static source and a dynamical scalar. The breaking scale is calculated in the continuum limit. In units of the lightest glueball we find $r_{\mathrm{b}}{m}_G\approx 13.6$. The implications of our results for QCD are discussed.

Comments: 4 pages, 2 figures; equations (4)-(6) corrected, numerical results and conclusions unchanged